This
early Middle English rota, a canon for several voices,
survives in a manuscript from Reading Abbey dating from the mid-thirteenth
century (for fuller information on the ownership and contents of Harley
978, with a reproduction of the relevant page, see the
manuscript). The alternative Latin text in red ink beneath it is a
lyric on the Passion. The main critical debate on the poem has
centred on the relationship between the two texts: which came first, and
what is the relationship between them?

For a recent
discussion of this question, with a summary of earlier work, see Roscow
(1999); Roscow also re-examines the controversial question of the tone
of the poem (is it an innocent spring song (reverdie) or something
coarser, linking the cuckoo with adulterous love?).

For an account
of similar pairings of sacred and secular lyrics during the Middle Ages,
see the background note What
is a contrafactum?

Set up by Bella
Millett, enm@soton.ac.uk. Last
updated 29 May 2003
. Image of London, British Library, Harley 978, f. 11 reproduced by
permission of the British Library; no further reproduction permitted.